Dosen Pengampu : Anggia Kargenti, S.Psi, M.

Psi

RESUME
Creativity and Ethics


DISUSUN OLEH :
ZIOLDY ARHDUM

PROGRAM PENDIDIKAN PROFESI AKUNTANSI
FAKULTAS EKONOMI
UNIVERSITAS RIAU
2014

Intellectual Virtues
Intellectual virtues, also called epistemic or truth-centered virtues, include wisdom,
the love of truth, intellectual honesty, intellectual courage, intellectual humility, intellectual
integrity, and self-respect in intellectual matters. Intellectual virtues contribute greatly to
moral creativity in science. In general, they should be counted as moral virtues. Scientific
creativity is not itself a virtue but instead an achievementthe achievement of producing new
and valuable products. Even so, the disposition to be creative in science qualifies as a moral
virtue insofar as it serves moral ends.

An Exemplar
Throughout his life, Darwin focuses on the sciences that were directly relevant to the
theory for which he is most famous, the evolution of species from a common ancestor by
means of natural selection. No one before or after him mastered so many scientific
disciplines, including geology, paleontology, comparative anatomy, developmental biology,
ethnology, and psychology. This mastery and focus come at a cost, including loss of his early
love of poetry and drama. He reports that his mind seems to have become a kind of machine
for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts. Yet there is nothing mechanical
about his love of science and his passion for discovering deep explanations, all the while
delighting in observation and experimentation.
Several virtues support Darwins creativity: intellectual honesty, conscientiousness,
humility, perseverance, self-respect, and courage. Honesty, to begin with, combines
truthfulness and trustworthiness, both of which are rooted in respect for truth. Darwins
truthfulness is accompanied by strong independence of thought, as well as respect for
evidence. In general, he is not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men, and he endeavors
to keep his mind free, so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved . . . as soon as
facts are shown to be opposed to it.4 He adopts as a golden rule the practice of immediately
making a record of criticisms of his views, to counter the natural tendency to neglect opposing
evidence, and then to respond to the criticisms in subsequent publications.
He is also a masterful writer who patiently and with difficulty strives for clarity and
care in reasoning. As for conscientiousness, Darwin credits himself with being superior to
the common run of men in noticing things which easily escape attention, and in observing
them carefully.6 His attention to detail is illustrated by his habits of collecting. He recalls that
one day, on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles and seized one in each hand;
then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so that I popped the one which
I held in my right hand into my mouth.7 In this instance his conscientiousness is
not altogether successful; the beetle in his mouth burns his tongue with an acrid discharge,
causing him to drop two of the prized specimens. Darwins conscientiousness is interwoven
with perseverance, shown in unbounded patience in long reflecting over any subject and
industry in observing and collecting facts.8 This perseverance and industry emerge
gradually. They begin with his early hobbies of collecting minerals and observing wildlife,
strengthen during two years of medical school and three years in studying for the Anglican
ministry, and culminate in the five-year voyage on the Beagle. They continue unabated
throughout his adult life which, except for family activities, centered entirely on study and
writing. His dedication is remarkable, as well, because his inherited wealth made it
unnecessary to work for a living. Darwin is a model of intellectual humility in being
subservient to truth. He is equally humble in his self-assessments and lack of arrogance,
which is noteworthy given that he is the greatest scientist of the nineteenth century and one of
the most creative thinkers of all time. In a remarkable under- statement, he says he possesses
only a fair share of invention and of common sense or judgment, such as every fairly
successful lawyer or doctor must have, but not I believe, in any higher degree.9 At the same
time, avoiding false modesty, he is aware that his books found a large readership, suggesting
his name ought to last for a few years.10 Although he does not seek general fame, he
confesses a strong desire for recognition from other scientists. This desire supports rather than
distorts his passion for discovery.
His intellectual humility interweaves with his ambition to be a creative scientist and
to be recognized as such. Self-respect combines reasonable self-love, self-responsibility, and
selfconfidence, all of which are essential to intellectual endeavors. Biographers trace
Darwins self-respect to his voyage on the Beagle: Five years and a world separated him from his
old flustered, directionless, insecure self. There was a new confidence, a new earnestness; he had
survived on his wits in inhospitable climes, encountered wars and savages, and trekked across the
Andes. He was pleased just to be alive. He had become his own man, thinking for himself, confident
enough to challenge authority.12 Finally, Darwin is a courageous thinker. His theory of evolution
challenged widely held religious convictions, as well as dominant beliefs in biology and
related sciences. His courage takes the form of intellectual daring taking risks in pursuing a
bold idea that challenges established beliefs. It also takes the form of social courage in risking
derision from peers and the wider society. Admittedly his social courage has limits. Unlike
Bruno and Galileo, he does not risk death from the Inquisition, but he quite reasonably fears
being condemned as a heretic at a time when that condemnation mattered for his family.
He was ambitious but not aggressive, and he wanted to wait until the end of his life to
publish what he knew would be an explosively controversial theory. It took Alfred Russel
Wallaces independent discovery of evolution to provoke his completion and publication of
the Origin of Species in 1859, and on other occasions he needed the nudge from friends to
draw him into public debates.

Psychological Realism
One exemplary scientist, of course, provides no basis for generalizations about the
contribution of intellectual virtues to creativity in science. Exploring that contribution should
draw upon a variety of examples, including Elion, Salk, Palchinsky, and many others I
discuss. Most important, it should take account of scientific studies of creative scientists.
Those studies ensure psychological realisman accurate view of human nature as a framework
for moral reflection. Psychological realism implies appreciating the role of the intellectual
virtues in science while avoiding implausible idealizations about the purity of motives and
commitments probably few scientists are like Darwin in this regard. Psychological realism
also overthrows the view that virtues are all or nothing, whether we are speaking of the scope
of an individual virtue or of clusters of virtues (and vices) defining character.
Above all, psychological realism avoids moralism, in its pejorative sense: advocating
unrealistic moral rules or ideals, insensitivity to context, moral parochialism, dogmatism and
rigidity, being unduly judgmental, preachy pomposity, and misusing moral judgments to gain
unfair advantages.
In seeking psychological realism, I draw on several leading psychologists who have
developed confluence theories that integrate a variety of factors to explain creativity. Many
of those factors are or imply intellectual virtues, although psychologists usually avoid
explicitly speaking of virtues and other values. Here are some of the empirical studies relevant
to Darwins virtues. Regarding love of truth, Robert Sternberg reports that numerous studies
of creative individuals emphasize the priority of intrinsic motives, that is, motives focused on
the tasks comprising the work rather than external rewards such as money and fame. Creative
individuals really love what they are doing and focus on the work rather than the potential
rewards. Mary Ann Collins and Teresa Amabile agree: love for ones work is advantageous
for creativity, in all domains.17 Love means deep caring involving intrinsic motivation,
that is, the motivation to engage in an activity primarily for its own sake, because the
individual perceives the activity as interesting, involving, satisfying, or challenging.18
Creative scientists are highly motivated in their work, curious, willing to submit to the
standards of excellence, and ambitious to be creative.
Creative ambition is essential. To emphasize its importance, Sternberg suggests that
to a large extent, creativity is a decision. The commitment to be creative arises from and in
turn stimulates years of disciplined study to develop necessary intellectual skills and a strong
knowledge base within a domain, as well as to develop personal thinking styles in
approaching problems. The desire to be creative in science is motivated by love of
understanding and by desires for achievement and recognition. sense of unmixed with selfish
motives, and they are always mixed with elements of self-interest. An area of ongoing inquiry
is the extent to which extrinsic motives such as money, fame, and power tend to support or
subvert intrinsic motivation such as the love of science. Again reflecting common sense,
psychologists have found that external motivation usually reinforces intrinsic motivation,
although in excess it can undermine it. Competitiveness is a good example. It is an extrinsic
motive in that it centers on superiority to peers, rather than on enjoyment of work itself.
Especially in the contemporary world of large-scale scientific projects, competitiveness
motivates most creative scientists. Another extrinsic motive, the desire for recognition, plays
a major role in motivating scientific creativity.
Turning to courage and perseverance, there are good reasons to believe these virtues
and ideals are important in contemporary science. Creative work tends to be challenging and
difficult. In science, the difficulties include risks of failure, years of hard work, self-doubt,
intellectual complexity, and tolerance for doubt and uncertainty. Hence, there is a need for
courage and perseverance in confronting dangers and hardships. The idea of intellectual
courage might sound a bit overblown as applied to most creative scientists. It is not. There are
genuine risks in trying to be creative in science, especially the risk of being wrong. Large
research projects are gambles that often fail to yield important results. Nobel Laureate J.
Michael Bishop reports that there is no fear in science greater than that of being wrong, and
he calls for courage in confronting this danger.27 He also emphasizes the importance of
intellectual daring and bold imagination, both of which require courage. In addition,
sometimes creative research is subversive in that it overthrows or forces a revision of
established beliefs that shape business, government, or other social practices. Finally,
traditional moralism spawned the simplistic idea that the virtues are all or nothing, such that
possessing one major virtue requires possessing others. A related idea underlies Aristotles
doctrine of the unity of the virtues, which connects with his understanding of the virtues as
consistent habits or dispositions of conduct, attitude, and emotion. To the contrary, as John
Dewey observed, all character is speckled.28 Empirical studies of motivation repeatedly
show that virtues are rarely manifested in consistent ways across different domains, or even
within a given area of our lives. This appreciation is reinforced by psychological studies that
explore how tightly personality traits are bound to particular contexts and situations.29 Thus,
an ethics of science should emphasize that virtues manifested in creative work might not carry
over into other areas of life, and even within their work scientists typically manifest moral
excellence in many situations but not all.
Darwins character was more coherent than most, and he was known for his
exceptional kindness, generosity, and fair-mindedness in both his personal and professional
life. In contrast, consider the Nobel Laureate physicist John Schrieffer, whom his friends
describe as a sober and cautious person. They were shocked to learn that he killed a person
and seriously injured several others while driving at a 100 miles an hour, using a suspended
drivers li- cense.30 They were even more shocked to learn that he had a long record of
reckless driving, including nine speeding tickets during the past decade, and at the time of the
accident his drivers license had been suspended. In addition, his impeccable honesty in doing
science did not carry over to his driving: He lied to the investigating police officer about a
truck that he claimed forced him off the road. Courage, honesty, and truth loving were
genuine virtues in his life, but not when it came to driving. Conversely, scientists might be
decent in their private lives but monstrous in their professional lives, as were many of Hitlers
scientists. Even within the context of professional activities, there might be considerable
inconsistency and complexity with regard to a single virtue.
Consider self-respect, which is closely related to self-esteem, a trait much studied by
psychologists. Healthy self-esteem is not simply feeling good about oneself. In the literature
on mental health, self-esteem functions as a normative term suggesting healthy, reasonable
degrees of self-affirmation and self-confidence lying between the extremes of narcissism and
self-denigration. In this regard, it overlaps with the moral virtue of self-respect. Self-
confidence recurs in the literature on creativity as a key personality trait advancing creative
endeavors.31 More cautiously, Csikszentmihalyi finds that most creative individuals manifest
a mixture of self-assurance and self-doubt, indeed a complexity of many features that are in
tension with each other.32 Self-confidence of creative people is frequently mixed with self-
doubt, sometimes enormous self-doubts about their creativity ability.

Intellectual Virtues as Moral Virtues
It will be objected that intellectual virtues are not moral virtues at all, and hence
technically not part of the ethics of science. They are virtues only in the broad sense of
excellences, but not moral excellences per se. This view is traceable to Aristotles contrast
between intellectual virtues (virtues of the intellect) with moral virtues (virtues of character).
For Aristotle, truth loving, intellectual honesty, intellectual humility, intellectual courage, and
confidence in the pursuit of truth are excellences of the mind, not character. In reply,
Aristotles distinction is neither clear nor compelling, and we should reject it. Aristotle
distinguishes moral and intellectual virtues in terms of their functions and origins, based on an
archaic division of the soul into rational and nonrational parts.33 The rational part is governed
by intellectual virtues learned during education. The nonrational part, which includes
emotions and bodily desires, is governed by moral virtues acquired as habits during early
development. But this dichotomy is a muddle. For one thing, the excellences of the intellect
involve the emotions; for example, delight in truth, contempt for shoddy thinking, and hope
for new discoveries. In addition, all excellences require habit formation and teaching from
childhood and throughout adulthood. For another thing, as even Aristotle emphasized,
intellectual virtues are thoroughly interwoven with other moral virtues, not only in providing
guidance but in partly defining them. For example, we cannot be temperate, courageous, or
fair without exercising practical wisdom (phronesis), that is, knowledge of what is morally
good, which Aristotle viewed as the primary intellectual virtue. In any case, virtues like
intellectual honesty and intellectual humility are clearly moral virtues in any contemporary
sense of moral. They are desirable traits of character that tend to contribute to the good of
both ourselves and others.
An alternative view is to think of scientific creativity and certain other intellectual
excellences as dependent moral virtuesexcellences that count as moral when they make
(or tend to make) moral contributions.37 Here two points are important. First, scientific
creativity and other intellectual virtues do tend to make moral contributions, directly or
indirectlythat is a central theme developed throughout this book. Second, the same qualms
about counting intellectual virtues as moral virtues can arise with many other moral virtues. Is
the suicide bomber who willingly dies for his cause courageous, and is the Nazi guard who
diligently performs his duties conscientious? Or instead, do the ideas of courage and
conscientiousness apply only in cases where morally desirable ends are involved, making
them dependent virtues? If we make the latter choice, virtually all moral virtues would be
dependent virtues. That way of talking is not implausible. I find it more plausible and
straightforward, however, to accept the intellectual virtues as moral virtues that, like all moral
virtues, are interwoven with other virtues that place limits on them.

MacIntyres Framework
We can now place the intellectual virtues in a wider perspective on virtue-oriented
nethics set forth by Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue. MacIntyre characterizes the sciences,
like other professions, as social practices: cooperative human activities centered on distinctive
internal goods that define the practice. For example, health is the internal good in medicine,
justice in law, empirical understanding in (theoretical) science, and safe and useful products in
engineering. Internal goods also include valuable ways of life, together with the enjoyments
they make possible for participants in social practices. In science, internal goods include
meaningful ways of life for scientists who develop, promulgate, and apply scientific
understandingas well as contributions to meaningful lives for members of the public who
participate in science indirectly. Both types of internal goods are public goods, in that they
contribute to the good of the community.
Virtues are excellences of character that enable participants to pursue the internal
goods of a social practice with excellence. For example, honesty, courage, self-discipline,
integrity, fairness, and team play contribute to meeting the standards of excellence in all
practices, and thereby promote the practices internal goods. The virtues also enable
individuals to live good lives, which we can think of as both morally desirable and personally
satisfying. 38 MacIntyre avoids any sharp dichotomy between moral and intellectual virtues.
For example, he specifies that honesty is a moral virtue that implies not only trustworthiness
but also carefulness for the facts, and courage implies a willingness to take whatever self-
endangering risks are demanded in pursuing the internal goods of the practice. Finally, I
should note that MacIntyre conflates two different criteria i distinguishing internal and
external goods.43 According to one criterion, internal goods are public (community) goods,
and external goods are privately owned (individual or institutional) goods. Thus, scientific
understanding is a public good, whereas the salary earned by a scientist is an external good.
According to a second criterion, internal goods are those goods defined by specific
practices, in contrast with external goods that can be acquired in virtually any practice.
Thus, the internal good of scientific understanding is defined using scientific concepts,
whereas the external goods of money, power, and fame are not defined by reference to science
or any other specific practice. MacIntyre fails to appreciate that the application of this second
criterion depends entirely on the level of abstraction in specifying goods. Recognition as a
creative scientist and fame as a scientist are defined in terms of a particular practice, and
hence are internal goods. Yet, they are also instances of recognition and fame, which can be
found in all practices, and are hence external goods when described in generic terms. In short,
they can be either internal or external goods, depending on how abstractly or concretely they
are specified. It is important to bear this point in mind when thinking about the goods defining
science and the motivation of scientists.
To conclude, professional ethics in science includes good character and the ideal of
being creative, in addition to the responsibilities set forth in various codes of ethics for
scientists. At the same time, the relation between character and creativity is complex. Good
character can contribute greatly to science, but it is obviously not sufficient for being creative.
Talent and luck might play more prominent roles than good character. Equally important,
non-moral motives contribute much to creativity, and thereby to morality, as discussed next.